ADHD: A Real Disorder or Fictional Disease?

If your child is fidgety, an excessive chatter box, and is easily distracted – especially in school – he may be a prime candidate for an ADHD diagnosis. Approximately 5.4 million American children have been labeled as such and 66 percent of them are prescribed medications to control their behavior.

Now there is a nationwide shortage of drugs used to treat ADD and ADHD. Recently Ritalin and Adderall have made the FDA’s list of drugs that are in short supply. The reason for this is simply a matter of supply and demand where demand far exceeds the ability of drug distributors to supply. There’s no doubt psychotropic drugs are a huge business. Here’s a look at the numbers: sales of drugs to treat ADHD reached over $1.2 billion in 2010.

That’s BILLION.

Vocal psychiatrists speak out.

The NIH has this to say about ADHD: “We do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there is no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.”

Some psychiatric experts believe it is. They argue that the condition is no more than a marketing gimmick created by pharmaceutical companies to peddle drugs.

According to Dr. Fred Baughman, a child neurologist, there is evidence to support that psychiatry has been in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry since the 1950s. Part of the marketing strategy was to call certain behaviors ‘”diseases” so they could push a pill to fix it.

One of these invented diseases was called ADHD. In a 1970 congressional hearing, psychiatrists testified that ADHD is a disease like any other, meaning it must receive a diagnosis from a doctor and that drugs are necessary to treat it. In order for ADHD to be considered a disease there must be some kind of chemical imbalance in the brain. However there’s never been scientific literature offered to prove that there is such a brain malfunction in ADHD patients.

Suddenly, typical childhood behavior has become a mental illness.

This could possibly be on of the most insidious and certainly profitable marketing campaigns of modern history. Twenty million children worldwide are handed a diagnosis of some type of mental disorder which requires taking psychiatric drugs throughout their childhood - or even their life. Children who have difficulty sitting still in class, get distracted easily, talk out of turn, or don’t pay any attention to the rules are, more likely than not, labeled with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

A report from the Drug Effectiveness Review Project from Oregon State University in 2005 analyzed 2,287 studies around the world and found insufficient evidence to indicate that drugs used to treat ADHD are safe or help with academic performance. Perhaps the worst part is that children slapped with an ADHD label take these highly toxic drugs every day. And these drugs have been shown to lead to dangerous conditions such as psychosis, violence, hallucinations, anxiety, heart attack and even sudden death.

Dr. Peter Breggin, a leader in psychiatric reform, stated, “Our society’s particular form of child abuse is a psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of our children. All psychoactive substances from alcohol and marijuana to psychiatric drugs reduce and compromise the function of brain and mind and none improve it.”

Opposing viewpoint.

One study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that ADHD is associated with lowered dopamine production. Dr. Jon A. Shaw, professor and director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, states, “This is a very important study as it adds increasing evidence that ADHD is a heritable disease with genetically determined neurobiological underpinnings and adds further evidence that this is a valid mental disorder, often requiring neurobiological interventions such a psychopharmacological treatment.”

Wherever the truth lies, the outcome is the same. Children diagnosed with ADHD represent lifelong customers to both doctors and big Pharma. Their parents tell them they have to take their medications and school personnel jumps in to help make sure they do. Make no mistake - drugging children with psychiatric drugs is big, big money.

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